


The Physics Lesson

by markymark261



Category: Marvel (Comics), The Incredible Hulk (Comics)
Genre: Drama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-03-04
Updated: 2003-03-04
Packaged: 2017-10-21 09:21:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/223615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/markymark261/pseuds/markymark261
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will Bruce Banner be destroyed by the foe he least expects? The answer will shock you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Physics Lesson

**Author's Note:**

> I've often wondered what would have happened if Alan Moore had taken over The Hulk (Marvel's green monster) rather than Swamp Thing (DC's green monster). That's what led me to write the following story.

The monster has gone away.

Banner lies alone now, sleeping in his bed. A constant influx of sedatives ensures that he'll remain that way until I decide I want him awake.

That time is now.

I turn off the influx, and, while he's still unconscious, go into an adjacent room, where I can view him through a one-way mirror.

Once upon a time I would have wanted revenge on Banner, but that was a long time ago. Overall, he's done me more good than he has harm. If not for him I'd just be a misshapen freak, but thanks to The Hulk I'm famous, a national hero in my country, a Red David to his Green Goliath. I get to move in celebrity circles, I get to know everyone's secrets, I get fan mail. Life is good.

And this month I finally got a chance to examine The Hulk. Normally when the military capture him they'll call in Reed Richards, or, if he's unavailable, Doc Samson. They've never called me in before, but that's because he's never been caught in my territory before.

I watch Banner waking.

They wanted me to find out his secrets so they could make an army of Hulks. We've seen grey and green Hulks, but they wanted red Hulks. But that wasn't what I wanted. I wanted to know his secrets so that life would make sense again.

My mutation's given me a great intellect, and I turned that intellect towards the study of Physics. But then The Hulk comes along and doesn't conform to what I've learned. The things I know are that energy cannot be created or destroyed, and that people at ground zero during bomb testing will get blown to bits.

Banner wakes. He looks around.

He spots the one-way mirror straight away, but, since he's used to being observed, ignores it. He then walks to the table with my journal lying open upon it.

My notes are in English. I want Banner to be able to read them after all. Natasha, who's such a good spy that the Americans mistakenly believe that she's working for them, has sent me all the files SHIELD hold on Banner and none of them indicate any Russian language expertise.

First he'll be reading of all the tests that I did on him. Of course he won't believe what I've written at first but I've given him access to a lab so that he can repeat them.

It looks like he's got to the interesting bit, he's started moving towards the lab. He'll be doing the carbon-dating test on himself. Wait a few hours.

Time passes.

Was that a scream of "No!" I heard? He must have discovered that he's only three years old.

Three years ago they tested Bruce Banner's gamma bomb. The gamma ray energy tore through Bruce's body, near-infinite quantum reactions took place as the energy attempted to deconstruct and mimic the life it destroyed. Bruce isn't Bruce, Bruce is the gamma rays. But there's too much energy there to copy Bruce properly, it takes too much concentration to keep Bruce's form, and when it loses that concentration the best copy it can manage is The Hulk.

He's reading the rest of my journal in a daze. He's not taking in my theories about Rick Jones. Less energy replaced him as he died in the gamma ray blasts, so the energy can maintain his form successfully. The latent energy manifested itself in the Kree-Skrull war in the shape of some old heroes drawn from Rick's (or, more precisely, a copy of Rick's) consciousness.

He's probably still skeptical about why Reed Richards didn't spot this, as was I. Now he's reading my theory on this. Reed did spot it. He couldn't tell people because of the effect it would have on his teammates. After all, they're just bundles of energy copying people, but Sue, Johnny and Ben just don't realise it. Gamma rays, cosmic rays - they're all pretty much the same thing. And then there was the Phoenix incident, where an energy copy of Jean Grey wreaked havoc. There's probably numerous heroes and villains I could speculate over, but I can leave that to another day.

I watch Bruce. He's writing something on my journal. He holds it up so that I can read it.

"GOOD WORK"

Bruce realises what I realised. That he's been the monster all along, not The Hulk.

He might never have found out but the Russian military had to come along and throw The Gremlin in the works.

Banner changes to The Hulk one last time. He doesn't struggle. He just changes peacefully. But not into The Hulk I know. A different one. A less human one. A peaceful, smiling Hulk.

The monster has gone away.

THE END

**Author's Note:**

> The Physics Lesson - Author's Notes and Annotations
> 
> This story's basically inspired by (or ripped off from, depending on your viewpoint) Alan Moore's The Anatomy Lesson from Saga Of Swamp Thing 21. In that story, Jason Woodrue AKA The Floronic Man discovers that Swamp Thing isn't Alec Holland at all, but rather a piece of vegetation that thinks it's Alec Holland. I was just applying the same thinking to The Hulk and ended up with this story.
> 
> Whereas, many years ago, I could have done a passable Alan Moore imitation, to do so at the time of writing this story would have entailed me re-reading the relevant Swamp Thing issues. That, in itself, wouldn't have been a problem, but, with the filing system I use for my comic collection (which is heavily based on chaos theory), finding the actual issues may have taken several years, if not gigaseconds. So I decided not to attempt an outright Moore imitation, with the exception of using the same sentence "The monster has gone away" to begin and end the story which was very typical of Moore at that time.
> 
> First of all I had to come up with a Jason Woodrue equivalent, i.e. a second-string supervillain, to discover Banner's secret. My first thought was The Leader but he was no good for the role because he's got the same origin as The Hulk anyway. Then I remembered The Gremlin. I have to confess, even though I've read many, many Hulk stories, I can't remember ever reading a story with The Gremlin. The only reason I remember him is because, as a teenager, I used to have a Marvel card game (well, actually, sad as it may appear, I've still got it) which featured The Gremlin on one of the cards. A quick surf of the net and I knew enough about him to throw a story together.
> 
> Which I guess brings us to the annotations:
> 
> Once upon a time I would have wanted revenge on Banner - The Gremlin thought that The Hulk was to blame for the death of his father, The Gargoyle.
> 
> Natasha - Natasha Romanov AKA The Black Widow
> 
> SHIELD - SHIELD is an intelligence organization headed by Nick Fury, but you already knew that, don't you?
> 
> Time passes - this comes from old text adventure games where you'd type in WAIT and the reply would be TIME PASSES...
> 
> Rick Jones - perpetual sidekick of the Marvel Universe. Bruce Banner became The Hulk saving Rick from the gamma bomb explosion.
> 
> The latent energy manifested itself in the Kree-Skrull war in the shape of some old heroes drawn from Rick's (or, more precisely, a copy of Rick's) consciousness - this refers to an incident in the Kree-Skrull war where Rick managed to summon some golden age heroes (Avengers issue 97).
> 
> Reed Richards ... Sue, Johnny and Ben - The Fantastic Four, a superhero group who gained their power when they were hit by cosmic rays
> 
> the Phoenix incident, where an energy copy of Jean Grey wreaked havoc - Jean Grey became the Phoenix in New X-Men 101 and died in X-Men 137. In Fantastic Four 286, it was revealed that the Phoenix was just an energy being pretending to be Jean Grey.
> 
> There's probably numerous heroes and villains I could speculate over - the number of Marvel heroes and villains whose origins involve radiation or strange rays is near infinite. My initial premise for this story was that it's what would have happened if Alan Moore had taken over The Hulk rather than Swamp Thing. This prevented The Gremlin speculating over subsequent events. Were Betty Banner's and the original Captain Marvel's deaths in any way related to the radiation being given off by Bruce and Rick respectively? If Rick could summon up Golden Age heroes from his imagination during the Kree-Skrull War, then could the Captain Marvels that he summoned just be creations of his mind and not the originals? But too much speculation can lead to madness.
> 
> And that's the end of the annotations. I considered some possible follow-ups, but none of them were really worth telling. Just for the sake of completeness, they were "Strangeness and Charm" (a quantum sex story with The Hulk and Betty based on Saga of Swamp Thing issue 34's "Rites of Spring"), "A Green and Pleasant Land" (based on Swamp Thing 56's "My Blue Heaven"), "Green Peace" (where The Hulk, without his Banner baggage and regretful of his violent past, becomes a pacifist and teams up with The Aquarian, Marvel's other pacifist superhero), and, last but least, a story where The Hulk becomes an empathic Mood Hulk, changing color in reaction to the people around him (Soldier gets angry - Hulk turns red, Soldier sees Hulk - Hulk turns white, Soldier runs away - Hulk turns yellow, Hulk all alone now - Hulk turns blue).


End file.
